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Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use
(venturebeat.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Explanation of how this works.
These "AI models" (meaning the free and open Stable Diffusion in particular) consist of different parts. The important parts here are the VAE and the actual "image maker" (U-Net).
A VAE (Variational AutoEncoder) is a kind of AI that can be used to compress data. In image generators, a VAE is used to compress the images. The actual image AI only works on the smaller, compressed image (the latent representation), which means it takes a less powerful computer (and uses less energy). It’s that which makes it possible to run Stable Diffusion at home.
This attack targets the VAE. The image is altered so that the latent representation is that of a very different image, but still roughly the same to humans. Say, you take images of a cat and of a dog. You put both of them through the VAE to get the latent representation. Now you alter the image of the cat until its latent representation is similar to that of the dog. You alter it only in small ways and use methods to check that it still looks similar for humans. So, what the actual image maker AI "sees" is very different from the image the human sees.
Obviously, this only works if you have access to the VAE used by the image generator. So, it only works against open source AI; basically only Stable Diffusion at this point. Companies that use a closed source VAE cannot be attacked in this way.
I guess it makes sense if your ideology is that information must be owned and everything should make money for someone. I guess some people see cyberpunk dystopia as a desirable future. I wonder if it bothers them that all the tools they used are free (EG the method to check if images are similar to humans).
It doesn’t seem to be a very effective attack but it may have some long-term PR effect. Training an AI costs a fair amount of money. People who give that away for free probably still have some ulterior motive, such as being liked. If instead you get the full hate of a few anarcho-capitalists that threaten digital vandalism, you may be deterred. Well, my two cents.
I very much doubt it even works against the multitude of VAEs out there. There's not just the ones derived from StabilitiyAI's models but ones right now simply intended to be faster (at a loss of quality): TAESD can also encode and has a completely different architecture thus is completely unlikely to be fooled by the same attack vector. That failing, you can use a simple affine transformation to convert between latent and rgb space (that's what "latent2rgb" is) and compare outputs to know whether the big VAE model got fooled into generating something unrelated. That thing just doesn't have any attack surface, there's several magnitudes too few weights in there.
Which means that there's an undefeatable way to detect that the VAE was defeated. Which means it's only a matter of processing power until Nightshade is defeated, no human input needed. They'll of course again train and try to fool the now hardened VAE, starting another round, ultimately achieving nothing but making the VAE harder and harder to defeat.
It's like with Russia: They've already lost the war but they haven't noticed, yet -- though I wouldn't be too sure that Nightshade devs themselves aren't aware of that: What they're doing is a powerful way to grift a lot of money from artists without a technical bone in their body.
Is dalle3 and midjourney using other methods?
Those companies don't make the technical details public and I don't follow the leaks and rumors. They almost certainly use, broadly, the same approach (latent diffusion). That is, their AIs work with a compressed version of the image to save on computing power.
o7 General Effort
Yeah. Not that it's the fault of artists that capitalism exists in its current form. Their art is the fruit of their labor, and therefore, means should be taken to ensure that their labor is properly compensated. And I'm a marxist anarchist, no part of me agrees with any part of the capitalist system. But artists are effectively workers, and we enjoy the fruits of their labor. They are rarely fairly compensated for their work. In this particular instance, under the system we live in, artists rights should be prioritized over
I'm all for janky (getting less janky as time goes on) AI images, but I don't understand why it's so hard to ask artists permission first to use their data. We already maintain public domain image databases, and loads of artists have in the past allowed their art to be used freely for any purpose. How hard is it to gather a database of art who's creators have agreed to let it be used for AI? All the time we've (the collective we) been arguing over thise could've been spent implementing a system to create such a database.
You should check out this article by Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney at the EFF. The EFF is a digital rights group who recently won a historic case: border guards now need a warrant to search your phone. It should help clear some things up for you.
Fair enough, and I can't claim to be a fan of copyright law or how it's used. Maybe what I'm moreso talking about is a standard of ethics? Or some laws governing the usage of image and text generating AI specifically as opposed to copyright law. Like just straight up a law making it mandatory for AI to provide a list of all the data it used, as well as proof of the source of that data having consented to it's use in training the AI.
There's nothing wrong with being able to use others' copyrighted material without permission though. For analysis, criticism, research, satire, parody and artistic expression like literature, art, and music. In the US, fair use balances the interests of copyright holders with the public’s right to access and use information. There are rights people can maintain over their work, and the rights they do not maintain have always been to the benefit of self-expression and discussion.
It would be awful for everyone if IP holders could take down any review, finding, reverse engineering, or indexes they didn’t like. That would be the dream of every corporation, bully, troll, or wannabe autocrat. It really shouldn’t be legislated.
I'm not talking about IP holders, and I do not agree with copyright law. I'm not having a broad discussion on copyright here. I'm only saying, and not saying anything more, that people who sit down and make a painting and share it with their friends and communities online should be asked before it is scanned to train a model. That's it.
How're we supposed to have things like reviews, research findings, reverse engineering, or indexes if you have to ask first? The scams you could pull if you could attack anyone caught reviewing you. These rights exist to protect us from the monopolies on expression that would increase disparities and divisions, manipulate discourse, and in the end, fundamentally alter how we interact online with each other for the worse.
I'm just gonna ask you to read my above comment again. What I'm suggesting is:
"Before you scrape and analyze art with the specific purpose of making an AI art generator model, you must ask permission from the original creating artist."
I read that. That's what I've been responding to the whole time. This is a way to analyze and reverse engineer images so you can make your own original works. In the US, the first major case that established reverse engineering as fair use was Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc in 1992, and then affirmed in Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation in 2000. Do you think SONY or SEGA would have allowed anyone to reverse engineer their stuff if they asked nice? Artists have already said they would deny anyone.
It's not about the data, people having a way to make quality art themselves is an attack on their status, and when asked about generators that didn't use their art, they came out overwhelmingly against with the same condescending and reductive takes they've been using this whole time.
Those are corporations. I'm concerned about how this impacts individuals. Small artists on social media, who make a living off small commissions. I think it is morally and ethically wrong to steal from them.
I also strongly dislike the way you are portraying artists as a monolith. There are some artists who would be willing to submit their art to make an image generation model. You're essentially complaining that not enough people would say yes in your opinion. As though there aren't hundreds of millions of public domain paintings drawings music and all sorts of things that can already be used without screwing over Charlotte and her small time Instagram art dig she affords her 1 bedroom apartment with. You're refusing to even ask her if she's okay with her creations being used in this way.
You're wrong. What you're describing is immoral. I don't care about corporations. They're not who I'm interested in protecting. Its artists themselves. You're also wrong that AI art is some boon for humanity. It's cheap, barely passable noise. Literally, that is what it is. A beefed up toy that mostly exists to generate shitty articles and images that corporations can churn out en mass to manipulate people. That's its best use case at the moment. It's gonna be a very long time, if ever, that human creativity and wit can be engineered.
I have always been focused on impacts to individuals. Let me make my self clear. It is wrong for IP-holders, be they corporations or independent artists, to have the power to control speech to the degree you're suggesting. Calling this stealing is self-serving, manipulative rhetoric that unjustly vilifies people and misrepresents the reality of how these models work and how the rights we have work.
Then let's amend my statements and limit them to only the loud, belligerent minority online. I know most artists don't care, I've seen it myself. I apologize for that. And I am saying not enough people would say yes to that option. Self-interest is a powerful force, without agreements by people ahead of time, some would absolutely degrade the experience of those around by initiating a race to the bottom to take more for themselves. That's why it isn't Charlotte's place to police what others talk about, this is something we've learned over hundreds of years. She is afforded a part of speech to protect her specific expressions, to ask for more than that, to want to encroach on people who aren't infringing on her piece of the pie is greedy and malicious. Even if the ramifications of her actions aren't apparent to her, especially if the ramifications aren't apart to her.
Styles are equivalent to ideas and Ideas are the property of nobody, this is a requirement because everyone in existence has derived their work from the work of others. Art isn't a product, it is expression, it is speech, it is inspiration, it is joy, it is what all humans are entitled to do. This is my first time seeing so many seriously considering cordoning off such a huge part of the human experience for the profit of a few, and it is concerning.
I believe that generative art, warts and all, is a vital new form of art that is shaking things up, challenging preconceptions, and getting people angry - just like art should.
'Charlotte' draws for people. She's good at it, and it's her livelihood. People like her are hurting literally no one by drawing things. She enriches the lives of all the people who enjoy her work. She should have a choice in whether or not her works are used to make image generators. That's it. It's not complicated. You shouldn't get to decide this for her, she never posted her images to the internet with the knowledge that someone would use them to figuratively build a machine with the expressive purpose of rendering what she does useless (even if it's very bad at doing so).
AI art stands against everything that every artist had ever taught me. It's spit on the face of art as a concept. It's art devoid of creation. Art made out of very long, very complicated algorithms weighing weights adjusted by billions of pictures passed through it. It's no more expressive or inspirational than an RNG function attached to a midi keyboard. It's mimicry, mimicry that really only stands to benefit corporations. I'm not about it.
AI in pretty well any other case? I'm on board. Let's automate human labor, all the things that we are forced to do for work. No more physical labor, no more 9 to 5, no more retail or fast food or corporate jobs. Do away with it all. I'm totally with you there. Doing away with human art? I mean, I've got no interest in that. If you like staring at what amounts essentially to nothing, then be my guest. I'm very open minded with art in general, totally down with avant guarde pieces, performance art, noise music, all the stuff at the fringe that offends the delicate sensibilities of those who seek to gatekeep what is or isn't genuine human expression.
Pretty big difference there is all those things are made by people. People with talent. Artists. We are enjoy the fruits of their labor. Their rights should be respected. They should have a say in whether specifically AI is allowed to copy their works.
Most of this is personal opinion and snobbery that I can't do much about except maybe ask that you examine how anarcho-capitalist your takes sound. Saying generative art will render what she does useless is like saying you quit singing in the shower because autotune exists. I just can't follow that logic. Art is something you do for you, to enjoy making any way you know how.
I also feel like you're ignoring the hundreds of open source models already available to everyone to use for free. Real tangible benefit that is being enjoyed by the everyman right now. I see others benefit every day and benefit from it myself. To say it really only stands to benefit corporations is a flat out lie. A tool that helps us better communicate, inspire, create, and connect with each other in ways they may not have been able to before is not a bad thing.
I mean, this part is pretty hyperbolic and pretty insulting, but thanks. No one is trying to do away with human art. It took us 100,000 years to get from cave drawings to Leonard Da Vinci. This is just another step for artists, like Camera Obscura was in the past. It's important to remember that early man was as smart as we are, they just lacked the interconnectivity and tools that we have.
Anyone copying their works should be sued for infringement, but that's not what's happening here. People are trying to take another piece of the public's increasingly limited rights and access to information. To fashion themselves as a new insidious owner class, owners of ideas. Even people you deem to not have talent have rights, and their rights aren't any less important. You can't now take those opportunities from them because it's their turn now.
Art is about bringing your ideas into the world, anything beyond that is fetish. Needing to be born talented or spending hundreds of hours to learn a skill is not art, that's work. If part of the work is how laborious was to make, that's fine, but if it's not, there's nothing wrong with that.
Objectivist, perhaps. They're the ones who obsess over controlling and monetizing free external benefits. There is no copyright in anarcho-capitalism (including "moral rights" etc.) so the GP doesn't sound at all anarcho-capitalist while arguing for infringement of others' real property rights to prop up their own artificial (non-rivalrous) "intellectual property" rights.
I see.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist best known for his nocturnal scenes of urban landscapes. He was called a "remarkable and imaginative painter" by the critic and historian Christopher Wood in Victorian Painting (1999). Grimshaw's love for realism stemmed from a passion for photography, which would eventually lend itself to the creative process. Though entirely self-taught, he is known to have used a camera obscura or lenses to project scenes onto canvas, which made up for his shortcomings as a draughtsman and his imperfect knowledge of perspective. This technique, which Caravaggio and Vermeer may also have used, was condemned by a number of his contemporaries who believed it demonstrated less skill than painting by eye, with some claiming that his paintings appeared to "show no marks of handling or brushwork", while others "were doubtful whether they could be accepted as paintings at all".
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Yes, an-caps lol famous for standing up for small time by commission digital artists trying to avoid exploitation of their creations. Totally yup you got me. All my criticism of corporations and pointing how AI art specifically benefits corporations at the detriment of actual human beings is very ancap of me.
Your whole bit about a new owner class is just, so far out there I don't even know what you're on. I don't have time to try and work through the justifications for why you think that you're entitled to make a mimic program for other peoples stuff. Not just to do it, but to claim that it makes you an artist.
Sorry but nah you're in the minority here. In this specific community in this specific space your voice is overrepresented. I've never met another person who agrees that our prototypical Charlotte and others like her are demonic overlords of the new ruling class who are seeking to subvert creativity and lock it in their hands. God, most of the artists I know willingly train others and a lot of them make content to train others. Now you're essentially complaining that you can't draw lmao like it's just ridiculous. I can't draw either, that's fine I don't want to put in the work to be able to create real visual art. I can live with that. I wouldn't use an ethically sourced AI image generator anyway, as it's literally an elaborate RNG function with a mimicry algorithm attached to it. It has no meaning and is empty.
Like typing "a cool painting" into bing image generator, which then tries its best to copy other real paintings made by real people, makes you an artist somehow. It doesn't. And you're not going to convince me of that, of all people. Let alone the majority of society who definitely do not agree that that makes you an artist, or that it makes it right to scrape images from artists like that.
Also the bit about me deeming people to have talent is just stupid. I'm not judging their artistic ability, I'm saying they're literally not making art they're not showcasing any artistic ability whether I think it's good or not.
You ignore the consequences of the kind of unregulated capitalism ownership of ideas would bring, and favor the interests of the privileged and the selfish.
I've already explained it multiple times, after you supposedly read the article I linked that explains it too, and I never claimed to be an artist.
What Charlotte wants is detrimental to everyone else and herself. No one should own ideas.
Never mentioned wanting to be an artist. You're either projecting on to me or just plain putting words in my mouth. I also don't use Bing Image creator.
This is just more snobbery. People don't need to conform to your standards of artistic ability to make art.
I don't think images on instagram were used to train open source AI. It's not exactly public. But Charlotte has allowed Meta to train AI on her images.
I think this may be part of the reason why the communication is unsatisfactory. You say you are concerned about the impact on individuals, but what you propose decidedly favors large corporations and the rich. I don't see what difference it makes for Charlotte's life, if an AI is trained on her images. I do see the benefit to Meta and others like it if open AI and smaller start-ups are curtailed.
I don't understand how your proposal would help someone like Charlotte.
Can you explain why you think that requiring people to use public domain or ask for permission to use non-public domain content to train image or text generators would benefit corporations? How does that benefit OpenAI, making them ask before using someones content?
It obviously benefits Meta by hindering the competition and by giving them another source of income.
As to OpenAI, I expect that Microsoft could supply them with quite some user data but I don't think OAI would be a major beneficiary, at first. OpenAI is, after all, a comparatively recent start-up. I think the biggest immediate gains would go to the established Big Tech firms that have their fingers on a lot of user data.
Major content owners, like the NYT, would be able to sell their content again. They have that lying around anyway, so it's pure profit for the owners. Corporations like Getty would also be able to make a killing, not just for being major content owners, but also because they are in the business of ensuring the "provenance" of media. If it's necessary to ask everyone and keep proof on file then they got you covered, for a price.
In the long run, I would expect companies like OpenAI to come out on top. They have their fingers on content generation, so the inequalities would just compound.
What you are talking about is an expansion of copyright law. Copyright includes more than just the right to make copies. It also includes the right to authorize derivatives, such as translations of texts, movies based on comics, or games based on movies. Fan art is also a derivative and relies on fair use for its legality (assuming it is legal).
If one were to create an "AI training right", then the natural place to put it, would be with the other rights covered by copyright. Of course, one could lay down such a right outside the copyright statute, and write that it is not part of copyright law.
In any case, it would be intellectual property. The person, who can allow or deny AI training on some work, would own that right as intellectual property.
Yeah, I'm not too concerned with janky AI generators having to ask before training a model on someone's art. Sucks for them I guess.
I don't agree with copyright. I'm an anarchist. I'm openly in favor of piracy, derivative, whatever else a human being might do with something. I don't agree with judicial systems, let alone market economies or even currency as a concept. And that's all fine and dandy, but there are people alive right now under capitalism. Unlike piracy, which pretty much exclusively takes from corporations like the overwhelming majority of things that are pirated are produced by corporate studios and studio funded artists, this one very specific thing takes the most specifically from artists the overwhelming majority of whom are already very poorly compensated many of them literally barely get by at all. AI models should have to ask them to copy and repurpose their works.
That's my only statement. You can assume I effectively don't agree with any other thing. I'm not here to have a long winded nuanced debate about a legal system I don't agree with and am not supporting in literally any capacity. I'm pointing at pixiv the website and saying "hey can you guys like actually ask before you start using these people's shit to make AI that is purposefully built to make sure that they are run out of jobs"
Unless you're going to somehow explain why artists aren't worth existing or something then don't even bother answering. I'm genuinely not interested in what you have to say and am tired of repeating myself in this thread.
I just thought you should know where you stand on the issue. It will make it easier to communicate. Just say that you want to expand copyright to cover AI training and boom. Clear statement. No long winded, nuanced debate needed.
Don't actually know where the hostility comes from. Are you mistaking me for someone else?
I dont want copyright to be expanded, I dont want laws governing intellectual property at all. I've described what I think is right pretty fully. I don't need you to tell me where I stand.
You can read my other comments if you want to engage with it any further. I'm not mistaking you for someone else. I'm just tired of people rehashing the same endless points. Arguing with AI bros is tireless, pointlessly futile. It consistently devolves into innane nonsense. I'm fully on board with doing away with copyright as a concept entirely. My request is that artificial image and text generation be regulated in a way that is ethical with respect to small content creators who should have a say in what software their art is used to generate. That's it fam I'm out
It's just that this was only the second reply to me, and the first about copyright. I had read your posts here and have ended up confused. I'm sorry that I have jumped to the wrong conclusion about where you stand. The regulation you propose would create, as far as I can tell, a new form of intellectual property. That just leaves me baffled WRT you not wanting laws on IP, but I guess I will have to live with that.
That's not quite right. A traditional worker is someone who operates machines, they don't own, to make products, they don't own. Artists, who are employed, do not own the copyrights to what they make. These employed artists are like workers, in that sense.
Copyrights are "intellectual property". If one needed permission (mostly meaning, pay for it), then the money would go to the property owners. These worker-artists would not receive anything. Note that, on the whole, the owners already made what profit they could expect. Say, if it's stills from a movie, then that movie already made a profit (or not).
People who use their own tools and own their own product (EG artisans in Marx's time) are members of the Petite Bourgeoisie. I think a Marxist analysis of the class dynamics would be fruitful here, but it's beyond me.
The spoilered bit is something I have written about the NYT lawsuit. I think it's illuminating here, too.
spoiler
The NYT wants money for the use of its “intellectual property”. This is about money for property owners. When building rents go up, you wouldn’t expect construction workers to benefit, right?In fact, more money for property owners means that workers lose out, because where else is the money going to come from? (well, “money”)
AI, like all previous forms of automation, allows us to produce more and better goods and services with the same amount of labor. On average, society becomes richer. Whether these gains go to the rich, or are more evenly distributed, is a choice that we, as a society, make. It’s a matter of law, not technology.
The NYT lawsuit is about sending these gains to the rich. The NYT has already made its money from its articles. The authors were paid, in full, and will not get any more money. Giving money to these property owners will not make society any richer. It just moves wealth to property owners for being property owners. It’s about more money for the rich.
If OpenAI has to pay these property owners for no additional labor, then it will eventually have to increase subscription fees to balance the cash flow. People, who pay a subscription, probably feel that it benefits them, whether they use it for creative writing, programming, or entertainment. They must feel that the benefit is worth, at least, that much in terms of money.
So, the subscription fees represent a part of the gains to society. If a part of these subscription fees is paid to property owners, who did not contribute anything, then that means that this part of the social gains is funneled to property owners, IE mainly the ultra-rich, simply for being owners/ultra-rich.
SD was trained on images from the internet. Anything. There are screenshots, charts and pure text jpgs in there. There's product images from shopping sites and also just ordinary snapshots that someone posted. The people with the biggest individual contribution are almost certainly professional photographers. SD is not built on what one usually calls art (with apologies to photographers). An influencer who has a lot of good, well tagged images on the net has made a more positive contribution than someone who makes abstract art or stick figure comics. And let's not forget the labor of those who tagged those images.
You could not practically get permission from these tens or hundreds of millions of people. It would really be a shame, because the original SD reveals a lot about the stereotypes and biases on the net.
Using permissively licensed images wouldn't have helped a lot. I have seen enough outrage over datasets with exactly such material. People say, that's not what they had in mind when they gave these wide permissions.
Practically, look at wikimedia. There are so many images there which are "pirated". Wikimedia can just take them down in response to a DMCA notice. Well, you can't remove an image from a trained AI model. It's not in there (if everything has worked). So what now? If that means that the model becomes illegal, then you just can't have a model trained on such a database.
Please don't. Marxists, at least Marxist-Leninists, tend to start talking increasing amounts of nonsense once the Petite Bourgeoisie and Lumpen get involved.
In any case the whole thing is (as Marx would tell you, but Marxist ignore) a function of one's societal relations, not of the individual person, or job. That relation might change from hour to hour (e.g. if you have a dayjob), and "does not have an employment contract" doesn't imply "does not depend on capital for survival" -- it's perfectly possible as an artist, or pipe fitter, to own your own means of production (computer, metal tongs) and be, as a contractor, in a very similar relationship to capital as the Lumpen day-labourer: To have no say in the greater work that gets created, to be told "do this, or starve", to be treated as an easily replaceable cog. That may even be the case if you have employees of your own. The question is, and that's why Anarchist analysis >>> Marxist analysis, is whether you're beholden to an unjust hierarchy, in this case, that created by capital ownership, not whether you happen to own a screw driver. As e.g. a farmer you might own millions upon millions in means of production, doesn't mean that supermarket chains aren't squeezing your bones dry and you can barely afford your utility bills. Capitalism is unjust hierarchy all the way up and down.
I also can't possibly unhear this, doesn't mean that my mind or any music I might compose is illegal. If it is overfitted in my mind and I want to compose music and publish that then I'll have to pay attention that my stuff is sufficiently different, have to run an adversarial model against myself, so to speak, if I don't want to end up having to pay royalties. If I just want to have it bouncing around my head and sing it in the shower then I might be singing copyrighted material, but there's no obligation for me to pay royalties either as many aspects of copyright necessitate things such as publishing or ability to damage the original author's income.
Well, Marx believed that the Petite Bourgeoisie would disappear. Their members, unable to economically compete, would become employed workers. Hasn't happened, though. He also observed that this class emulated the outlook of the Haute Bourgeoisie, the rich. IDK more about that. I find it interesting how vocally in favor of right-wing economic policies some artists are, even though these policies massively favor the rich. The phrase temporarily embarrassed millionaire comes to mind. I'm curious about that, is all.
I like how empathic your anarchist take is but I'm not really sure what to do with it.
That might be because I didn't give a single bit of advise regarding praxis :)
I'll just leave a link to one of Anark's videos here, though the overall tl;dr of everything is "build the new in the shell of the old without fucking up".
The economics are an unworkable mess but I don't mind having sent him some ad money. Do have anything on how an advanced economy with a high degree of specialization could coordinate production and logistics?
There's different ideas, roughly distinguished between market and council-based, with less and more central planning. The CNT in Spain had a quite market-based approach, for example, but OTOH you see council-type structures even in today's capitalism: The development of lithography technology and machines for that, for example, quickly hit a brick wall, none of the (gigantic) companies working on it were actually large enough to do it so they started cooperating. The label on the machine might say "ASML" but really they're only a systems integrator: They've worked with a multitude of other companies to develop and build exactly the stuff that will be necessary, there's no competition between say Corning and Zeiss who's going to make a particular lens or such: They've agreed, together, to build a certain technology, divided up the work according to their specialities -- including "make money with the machine", that's TSMC's area of expertise. Roughly speaking: The less commodified a particular erm commodity is the more likely it's not actually directly bound by market forces, even in our current economy you get these islands of horizontal cooperation within the larger shark tank. You'll pay money for those machines but money alone might not buy you one, you might need to be part of a syndicate.
But I agree with you (or I think that's your implication) that pure mutualism will not work for these kinds of "put a man on the moon" projects, it's not structured enough and without structure no planning (centralised or decentralised). And frankly speaking the theory around this topic is kinda lacking, first off because much of the theory about it is old, where "big industry" meant "a steel mill", secondly because Anarchism has ceased to plan ahead details: We don't have the necessary knowledge and information to pre-empt the decisions of people down the line, and we shouldn't attempt to, either. They will organise those projects as they see fit in some democratic manner, what's up to us is to grow democracy within the economy to a degree where more and more economic actors jump on the ship, as well as develop abstract frameworks, a body of ideas and approaches in line with Anarchist principles, that they can pick and choose from as they like and circumstances dictate, and develop further. And most of all we need to kill off hierarchical realism, that is, the idea that nothing ever works without an imposed hierarchy even though everyone sees it working all the time when friends get together to have a grill party. Are there scaling issues, sure... but hierarchies have scaling issues, too, even insurmountable ones (mostly around information processing complexity and perverse incentives) and we don't discount them on that basis. There's a strong cultural bias and blind-spot, there.
In a nutshell, it's the old leftist problem: We know exactly what's wrong and also know how things ought to look like to be better, but details, man, details. In the end, in practice, there's no perfect, there's only less bad.
Thanks for the long reply. I also took the time to read the wp on mutualism. Proudhon has been on my reading list forever because of his great quotes, but other things were always more relevant.
What you're describing about industry sounds perhasp like joint-ventures? It also sounds a lot like a cartel. Zeiss, along with other lens makers, was fined in 2010 by german antitrust enforcement because they had conspired to overcharge consumers.
I would never judge a school of ideas based on a few minutes of youtube. But I admit, I was thinking it and I would not have been motivated to spend more time on it without your reply.
I'm not concerned about stuff like putting a man on the moon. I'm thinking about feeding 8 billion (and rising) people, most of them living in cities. This takes an uninterrupted stream of food and water from strangers to strangers. As it goes today, you need fuel and spare parts, replacement machines. To grow the food you probably need fertilizer, maybe pesticides and so on (I'm not knowledgeable on agriculture).
We do this through markets. This decentralized method seems superior to central planning. Obviously, we can do very well without overt hierarchies. As we know, behind most markets is a government enforcing laws and possible intervening to impose fixes for perceived problems.
You may lose your farm if you don't make enough money to pay the bills. This can be framed as simply circumstance; predefined rules operate without any individual decision and thus without hierarchy. Or one may point to the individuals involved who still make the choices to enforce contracts or laws in the specific case.
If the farm passes to someone who makes more money with it, then that hopefully means that it is better at meeting the needs of other people. We don't need to discuss the flaws in the market system, but a system should have a way of ensuring that the meets of other people elsewhere - of strangers - are met. Scarce resources need to be put to a use that meets the needs of the many.
I have to think of crowd crush disasters. No one in such a crowd does anything very bad. They may even try to help other people if they can. They do the best they can with the information they have. But when 100s or 1000s of people are all pushing just a little, then the guys at the front get squished by the collective force.